Team ViaSat

Winning The Race Across America

All Hail the Spreadsheet

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Crew chief Barrie Adsett’s Google Drive contained 82 files of ­color-coded rider-rotation schedules, scouting reports of other teams’ strategies, weekly meeting agendas, checklists, diagrams, and more. The apogee was an auto-updating spreadsheet that ­provided hour-by-hour estimates of what each of the 13 crew members would be doing and where they’d be. “Having done the race six times before, we were able to leverage historical data to make educated guesses on how long it would take us to get between time stations,” says rider Ryan Denner. Two team wives, Dede Poorman and Sarah Cross, updated the data remotely during the race, reducing the number of calls and texts required between crews.